How To Use Hot Tongs To Crack Open A Wine Bottle

Jonathan Ross, a sommelier at Eleven Madison Park, is responsible for resurrecting the Old World tradition of using heated tongs to open wine.

By placing the red-hot metal around the bottle neck, it makes a clean break and leaves the cork intact. The method originated in Portugal as an alternative to opening very old bottles of wine with corks that tended to crumble from age.